ABSTRACT
While only a tiny percentage of today's plastics are recycled into new goods, the industry is moving toward a future where plastic lives on, given new life in a wide variety of products. New products made from recycled plastic are introduced every day, and since they are made of plastic it's not my intention to cover them in detail here. But plastic, as we know, doesn't go away, so it's important to consider what to do with the five billion tons of it we've already produced. Can it all be recycled into new products? Should we let what's already in the landfills rest in peace, or mine it to make new materials and products? New technologies for recycling include landfill mining, waste-to-energy programs that convert plastic to fuel through high-temperature incineration, industrial recycling, and bioremediation—a waste reduction method that uses biological processes to break down pollutants.
